Though we have had a great, God-centered, Christ-exalting week of ministry this past week, it has been very rainy, and the rain definitely took a toll on my spirits. Our host, Pastor Moses, told us that this amount of rain is completely abnormal for this time of year as December is normally a month of the dry season. Though God was sovereign (as He always is), and provided us with small pockets of sunshine for our visits to a school and a women’s conference, for the vast majority of the week we dodged mud puddles by day and fell asleep to the sound of African rain tickling our tin roof by night.
We do try our hardest, of course, not to let rain hamper our ministry plans, but this doesn’t mean that I have to like rain! Regardless of how I try to conceal my emotions, I find that my mood more than often corresponds to the sunniness (or lack thereof) of the particular day. It’s not ridiculous, I think, for a random person’s moods to change with the weather—after all, there have been heaps of scientific research done that suggest this is a fairly common phenomenon. What is ridiculous, however, is that born-again, increasingly sanctified Christians should experience this same phenomenon when they theoretically draw their joy, not from the weather or the amount of fleeting photons in the earthly sky, but from the immutable heavenly light that is Christ—the very one who dictates the weather.
God, through His grace alone, allowed me to see the ridiculous nature of my ever-changing moods (for I submit that no compartment of my human-sized brain, on its own accord, is capable of mustering up enlightenment over and above that which is shared by the majority of the body of saints). Biblical Hermeneutics is the study of how we should interpret the Bible, and I believe that it was hermeneutics that pushed me over the hump of emotional slavery to weather and into new realms of transcendent, circumstance-defying joy.
Good hermeneutics—and by good hermeneutics, I mean the kind that pledges its allegiance to the holy and perfect word of God, rather than to personal experience or to ever-changing cultural “standards”—dictates that we interpret our personal experiences using the Bible, rather than interpret the Bible using our personal experiences.
A perfect example of this, and an example relevant to this situation, is the example of the Psalm 23. In Psalm 23:6, we are told that “only goodness and faithful love will follow (us) all the days of (our lives).” If we were to let our personal experiences dictate the message—or even the verity—of scripture, we would look at an event like the death of a friend, bad financial luck, or, as silly as it sounds, a week of rain, and think to ourselves, “perhaps not only goodness and faithful love follow the saints. Maybe mostly goodness and faithful love follow us. Maybe the Psalm was just being poetic—after all, that’s what Psalms are, essentially—poems.” This inverted hermeneutical method, besides for birthing all types of heresy, not only cripples our obedience, but robs us of a great deal of joy in our day-to-day lives!
If we let scripture interpret our experiences, however, we stand by Psalm 23:6, which says that “only goodness and faithful love will follow (us)”, and we conclude that somehow, someway, a week of rain is an expression of God’s goodness. I would believe this even if I was unable to intellectually connect the dots, for I lean not on my own understanding, but as the World Race has progressed, and as I have been thrust into more and more circumstances that are beyond my control, I have indeed realized, in the realm of personal experience, that God’s goodness is often expressed in undesirable physical circumstances.
When one of America’s leading young Evangelical pastors, Matt Chandler, was diagnosed with a severe stage of brain cancer two years ago, he told the press that his brain cancer was an expression of God’s mercy. Baffled, the Dallas newspapers asked him how he had twisted or rethought his cancer to the point where he could call it “mercy.” Chandler, however, didn’t have any fancy argument to offer as he merely let scripture shape his personal experience, citing the fact that God bestows mercy alone, and never wrath, to his saints.
What a miserable life it would be if our joy were tied to our circumstances! God is indeed a God of blessing (we have seen this time and time again this month!) and God is also a God of joy, but the blessing is not what causes the joy. Joy is much greater when it exists regardless of the circumstance, because when we experience such joy, we can celebrate and rejoice without the timidity that comes from having to cross our fingers and hope that our circumstances remain stable.
The secular realm also urges us to “be happy regardless of our circumstances”. Anyone who’s spent more than fifteen minutes in a Barnes and Noble “self-help” section knows this! Rather than agreeing and enjoying the tempting earthly pleasure of “having something in common with the secular world”, however, I would much rather serve the Lord by highlighting the uniqueness of Christ and by calling out the secular notion of transcendent joy as bogus and unfounded. I don’t mean to condemn for the sake of playing Devil’s advocate, but to plead for the sake of playing Christ’s advocate.
The secular idea of happiness regardless of one’s circumstances is useless because it isn’t founded on anything! Before I became a Christian, I tried to attain circumstance-defying happiness, but never could! Granted, I was happier than the average individual, but my circumstances were also much better than the average individual’s. Will somebody just step up and be a whistleblower on this secular transcendent joy idea? Even if you try to conjure up circumstance-defying joy based on some cornerstone other than Christ, you still have to admit that your makeshift cornerstone is fleeting. “I’m just happy because I have my health”—you won’t always have your health. “I don’t need anything; I’m just happy for a supportive family”—your family can be taken away from you in the blink of an eye. As Christians, we don’t have to manufacture pseudo-joy by tirelessly mustering up a previously non-existent emotion, but instead we get to experience actual joy by silently acknowledging eternally existent truths, namely Biblical facts and the personhood of Jesus Christ.
My family has a funny tradition of going to a bowling alley every Christmas eve, and I’ll be sad to miss it this year. As a pretty competitive person, I always get incredibly worked up about bowling scores, not because it’s bowling, but because it’s something I can compete in. I will often pump my fists when I get a strike and slam my foot into the ground when I miss an easy spare opportunity. On this one night a year, however, I would be happy regardless of my score and I would be happy because I was anticipating the whole heap of presents that were to come the next morning! This is analogous to what my Christian walk is becoming, as every day is starting to feel more and more like Christmas Eve, and as the eternal promises and hope in Christ are enough to produce transcendent, circumstance-defying joy. This is exactly what the Apostle Paul talks about in Colossians 1:4 when he tells the Colossian Christians that he had “heard of (their) faith in Christ Jesus and of the love (they had) for all the saints—the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for (them) in heaven.”
I do not want to act as if I am now on cloud-nine twenty-four hours a day, as there are still many times when I let my circumstances dictate my joy. I do want to mention, however, that my shortcomings are not evidence of God’s inability to provide joy, but rather evidence that I still have great amounts of sanctification yet to be worked out in me. I also do not want pretend like joy isn’t something that, even in the Christian life, doesn’t need to be fought for. The fight, however, is a fight to recognize truth, not a fight to conjure emotions. I do not want to say “I used to be 100% blind to this truth about joy, but now I understand.” I do want to say, however, “I used to be 100% blind to this truth about joy, but now, by the grace of God, and with great sanctification and revelation still remaining, I am beginning to understand.”
As I sit here and finish writing this, the sun is shining brightly and it must be 75-degrees outside—on December 2nd—this is a new experience for me! It’s hard not to smile from ear to ear. The weather, however, is not the reason for my happiness, but instead is mere excess. “Seek first His kingdom…and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33). You don’t need the sun when you have the Son.
